Hello all. I know its been a long time since we last talked. Sorry for my absence but life has been really busy. Since my last blog, I conducted a workshop at the annual African American Genealogy Seminar hosted by the Latter Day Saints. I taught a class entitled, "USING DIGITAL SCRAPBOOKING IN YOUR FAMILY HISTORY."

The purpose of the class was to teach individuals how they could combine the art of Digital Scrapbooking and graphic art with their genealogy research to create a Family History book. I illustrated how they could personalize their pages by combining family photographs, clipart and backgrounds with your genealogy research "finds" and family biographies to create a Family History Book that represented their family’s unique personality and heritage.

The information that I presented was very well received. As I had a lot of people come up to me after the class and tell me how much they enjoyed the class and that I had given them some ideas that they planned to utilize in creating their family books.

Below is a short outline of the information and steps that I presented for using digital scrapbooking in your Family History book. Hopefully, it will gives you some ideas and valuable tips on putting together your family history.

USING DIGITAL SCRAPBOOKING IN YOUR FAMILY HISTORY

1. BENEFITSa) Adds personality and interest to your Family History Book and helps to better present and display your ancestors and their storiesb) You can print out multiple copies of your Family Historyc) You can display in the form of a web gallery and/or send to your family and friends electronically so they can print their own copiesd) It is less costly than traditional Scrapbooking since you spend less on supplies

2. EQUIPMENT/SOFTWARE NEEDED (There are lots of software programs you can use. Here are some examples. Some contain pre-made templates and elements that allow you to create beautiful pages for your Family History)

3. STEPS: (Please note that there is no particular order that you need to perform steps a through e. You can choose all or one step. It’s up to you what you want to do to create your own unique designs)

a) Choose photograph(s) of people, places, things.b) Upload photograph(s) from computer file, scanner or digital camerac) Select background, borders, frames, photo corners, embellishments, clipart, maps, chartsgraphs, family trees or any other items you want to included) You can add genealogy documents such as birth and/or death certificates, marriage license.e) Enter your genealogy text such as a individual biographies or other information pertainingto the page that you are creatingf) Arrange Items on page as desiredg) Once a final layout and design is completed, you can save, print, email or post to a webpageh). Finally, you can have your pages bound to create your Family History Book